Coconut Fat Wash

By Dr. Elixir

Mixing cocktails at home can easily result in your cocktails matching or exceeding cocktails served in most restaurants.  A technique that has been around for a long time that is now coming back in fashion is “fat washing” the alcohol.  This is an easy to do technique that has the unique benefits of softening the harshness of the alcohol, infusing added flavors to the alcohol and increasing the feel of “density” of the alcohol.  For my first experiment with this technique, I decided to create a coconut fat wash.

• 3 tablespoons of coconut oil
• 3 tablespoons of dark brown sugar
• Over gentle heat in a pot, I liquified the oil and brown sugar.  I added one 16 ounce can of organic coconut cream. 

I took three jars and filled each jar with 1/3 of the amount of finished fat wash.  I then added 2/3s of that amount of whisky, gin, and vodka to the jars.  I closed the jars and let sit for six hours.  I then put the jars in the freezer overnight.  The following day, I double layered cheese cloth inside of a strainer and strained each jar separately.  I cleaned out the jars and put the strained and filtered alcohols back into their containers.  I tasted each of them and marveled at how the character of the alcohols had changed.  I then created cocktails for each alcohol.  The gin cocktail is printed in the latest issue.  As an on-line treat, I will now provide you with another drink.

Everyone should know what a well made old fashion tastes like (if not, by all means, try one prior to making this cocktail).  Creating a riff off of this classic cocktail I used the coconut washed whiskey ( I used Hakushu 12 year old Japanese Whiskey because it has a similar flavor profile to a bourbon).  Since I added a tropical note to the whiskey, I thought about old fashion Caribbean music.  The precursor to Reggae music is a genre called Ska.  I named this drink Whis -Ska:

• 1 teaspoon of raw sugar
• 1 teaspoon of organic, unsweetened pineapple juice
• 10 drops of angostura bitters
• 3 drops of orange bitters
• Muddle this mixture
• 3 ounces of the coconut washed whiskey
• Shake with a couple of cubes of ice for around 15 seconds and pour through strainer into cocktail class over a large cube of ice (I used a 3 inch thick ice ball) and garnished with an orange peel.